James Bain Exonerated By DNA After 35 Years In A Florida Prison

James Bain,54, was wrongly convicted in December of 1974 for the rape and kidnapping of a 9-year-old little boy. Bain had been in prison since the Nixon presidency, just to give you some perspective.

The Innocence Project, is a national organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing, was responsible for aggressively getting Bain’s DNA tested, which led to his exoneration.

In 2001 a Florida statute was passed allowing cases to be reopened for DNA testing,and Bain immediately filed to have his DNA tested, but was turned down 4 times. It was only after he presented his case to the Court of Appeals that he was granted a hearing.

Polk County State Attorney Jerry Hill told the judge that DNA testing had excluded Bain from the crime.

“He’s just not connected with this particular incident,” Hill said.

James Bain-released-from-prison after 35 years

“Mr. Bain, I’m now signing the order, sir,” the judge said, referring to an order vacating the judgment and sentence.

The first thing he did was to call his mom on a cel phone, which was the first time that he had ever used one, as they did not exist before he was imprisoned, and they did not have access to them in jail.

I can not imagine what it must be like to spend that much time in prison labeled a pedophile, as well as knowing that you are innocent. James Bain says that his faith in God pulled him through, and that he holds no ill will towards anyone involved in his incarceration.

He says he’s not angry and is looking forward to eating fried turkey, drinking Dr. Pepper and hopefully going back to school.

The Houston Chronicle reports…He was convicted largely on the strength of the victim’s eyewitness identification, even though testing available at the time did not definitively link him to the crime. The boy said his attacker had bushy sideburns and a mustache. The boy’s uncle, a former assistant principal at a high school, said it sounded like Bain, a former student.

The boy picked Bain out of a photo lineup, although there are lingering questions about whether detectives steered him.

The jury rejected Bain’s story that he was home watching TV with his twin sister when the crime was committed, an alibi she repeated at a news conference last week. He was 19 when he was sentenced.[picapp align=”right” wrap=”true” link=”term=prison&iid=7390698″ src=”5/d/7/e/GUANTANAMOILLINOIS_3924.JPG?adImageId=8428788&imageId=7390698″ width=”234″ height=”155″ /]

The victim is currently 44 years old, and has been informed of James Bain’s release from prison.State investigators have taken more DNA from both Bain and the victim for additional testing.

It is being reported that Florida State has passed a law that automatically provides $50,000 in compensation for every year an innocent person has spent in prison,and James will be entitled to the award.

The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal clinic affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and created by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld in 1992. The project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. As a clinic, law students handle case work while supervised by a team of attorneys and clinic staff. http://www.innocenceproject.org/

His mother, Sarah Reed, has been in and out of hospitals in recent years. She said she is putting her house and her car in her son’s name. “I want him to have something by himself. He’s suffered enough,” she said.

This case serves as a beam of hope for those that are falsely imprisoned throughout our country, and to those heartless fools that believe everything the police say is true. The sad truth is that black men are in prison for crimes they did not commit, at a rate three times that of white men, who have the nerve to blame us for their heinous crimes, knowing that the culture is primed in bigotry and hatred to believe such lies about our people.

We are being kidnapped by the judicial system, because we are behind enemy lines.We only have our selves to rely upon, to stay strong and healthy, so that we can eventually be freed, and our good names restored, just like James Bain.

I can only imagine the level of racial injustice that was pervasive in South Florida in the 1970’s could only have fanned the flames of hatred that ultimately led to James wrongful conviction.

Just think about it…only a decade earlier, James would have been lynched in that county, as had happened there so many times in the past,…and the mob would have murdered an innocent man.

As it stands, the white man who raped and kidnapped the 9-year-old victim, got away with it, by relying upon the racism that most non-black people use to convict and kill innocent young black men.